Category: Multimedia

Christoph Paul is an award-winning humor author. He writes non-fiction, YA, Bizarro, horror, and poetry, including The Passion of the Christoph, Great White House Volume 1 and Volume 2, Slasher Camp for Nerd Dorks, and Horror Film Poems. He is an editor for CLASH Media and CLASH Books and edited the anthologies Walk Hand in Hand Into Extinction: Stories Inspired by True Detective and This Book Ain’t Nuttin to Fuck With: A Wu-Tang Tribute Anthology. Under the pen name Mandy De Sandra, he writes Bizarro Erotica that has been covered in VICE, Huffington Post, Jezebel, and The A.V. Club. He is represented by Veronica Park at the Corvisiero Literary Agency.

In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum chats with Paul about managing life as a full-time writer and editor, exploring bold and fearless possibilities with a pseudonym, reflecting on punk rock roots, and much more.

I hadn’t been there in decades and planned to speak to the people who lived in it now.A neighbor said it was vacant, sale pending. A peaceful home full of the past,set back from the road several hundred feet behind a serene lake.I drove in beyond the tall trees, ones I helped plant as tiny seedlings, parked, and walked around the outside.My window was unlocked, close to the ground. I climbed in.Inside, memories crowded around me.Long ago, seated comfortably on a deep, red, sectional sofa in front of a window, as an only child,…

Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn and is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (The Operating System, 2017), and Xenos (Agape Editions, 2016). She’s also the editor of A Shadow Map: An Anthology by Survivors of Sexual Assault (CCM, 2017). She received an MFA in writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and is the founder of Yes, Poetry, a managing editor for Luna Luna Magazine and Civil Coping Mechanisms, and an instructor at Brooklyn Poets. Some of their writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Brooklyn Magazine, Prelude, Apogee, Spork, The Feminist Wire,BUST, and elsewhere.

In this episode, Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum sits down with Valente to discuss her writing history and inspirations, as well as her feelings on social media, the lit community, and even some pop culture stuff (like music, The Leftovers, and Twin Peaks).

Author’s Note: “Behemoth” is a synthesis of the different styles of music I have studied over the years; as such, it borrows from many genres but belongs exclusively to no single one. I’ve never really cared much for the tendency to rigidly categorize music by [sub]genre—doing so leads less to diversity than it does to rigid compositions and performances that are written according to a template. Music is structured, and music is rule-based. Probably more than any other art form, music is mathematically driven. Of course, the visual arts are governed by ratios and the rules of visual perception (particularly in the case of naturalistic art), but I would argue that mathematics runs thicker through the veins of music than it does any other art form. Due to its intrinsically ordered nature, music need not be bound by any artificial means. “Behemoth” was written with this in mind.…

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